Overview Of Bombay Film Industry In India
In fact, Bombay film industry is the microcosm of India and keeps on churning out hundreds of films every year. The popular cinema is the new home of the non-rational. It is, according to Patil, ‘a collective fantasy, a group dream, a bridge between desire and reality, a vehicle of hope healer of trauma, cleanser of the soul.’
Indian films mirror the social, political and cultural realities of common Indians. So it is not surprising that Shashi Tharoor in his novel lampoons the Indian film industry for its artificiality, superficiality and occasional hypocrisy and uses the conventional framework of rich boy meeting the poor girl or vice-versa or love at first sight.
However, in Bollywood, this love at first sight is looked at with disapproval and hatred. It invites lots of fighting sequences but finally everything, normally ends with a happy note.Like religion, cinema is also used as opium for the masses. Their senses are made inactive and dull, so they are made to believe what ever goes on the screen.
Ramanan very cleverly tries to highlight the glamour of tinsel town portrayed in Show Business: … Show Business is a shorter effort but still long enough. … Bombay film world is its focus. The celluloid city is famous for what is called Bollywood. Cinema is a big business and this tinsel town is famous for its big spending, its creation of huge illusions, its escapist entertainment and its yellow journalism, scandals and hypocrisy. Tharoor chooses to satirize this world.
The story of Show Business is the story of film actor Ashok Banjara who sacrifices big idealism to fit into the ethos of filmy world and to earn huge fortune. To his surprise he succeeds at once and by his second film, he turns into a big celebrity into the film world. He has the leading role in films, like Godombo, Judai, Dil Ek Qila, and Mechanic. In the last film, Kalki, he gets wounded while getting shot.
The whole world prays for his welfare while he was lying in Bombay’s top hospital festooned in tubes and drips and bandages. Just the contrast has been presented by Pranay, Ashok’s cinema villain who has his confessional moments about the self and also about his affair with Maya, Ashok’s wife. Maya lived closely to Pranay and bore an illegitimate child by Pranay which gets known to Pranay too. Kulbhushan Banjara, Ashok’s father’s perception and philosophy of life is entirely different.
He is politician and Minister of State for Minor Textile. On his advice and persuasion, Ashok joined politics and but it turned out to be a great failure. Mehnaz Elahi happened to be Ashok’s heroine in several films. She was cast opposite him mostly at his own request. Later, we come to know that they were in love with each other and on some occasion, they decided to get married and solemnized it in some temple in spite of the fact that Mehnaz was a Muslim lady.
However, Mehnaz was never given the status of a lawfully wedded wife as this would affect Ashok’s reputation as a public figure especially his image of a politician. Mehnaz Elahi herself makes confession of some of the facts unknown to the whole world when she was grilled by the media. She becomes more confessional when she starts self-introspection and finds herself cheated in the relationship as Ashok values his social prestige and his self –esteem more than her feelings for him. However, Mehnaz finds him devoid of any feeling of love for her except some initial melodramas which she found so real that she agreed to marry him.
